Ukraine Breaks New Ground With Air and Sea Attacks on Russia

More than two years into the war with Russia, and in the face of intense clashes in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has upped the ante and zeroed in new targets inside internationally recognized Russian territory.

On Sunday, Britain's Sky News reported that a Ukrainian jet had fired a weapon and struck inside Russia for the first time. The warplane reportedly hit a "Russian command node" in Russia's border Belgorod region, although it is not clear whether Western weaponry was used in the strike. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Belgorod sits close to Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, into which Moscow launched a new offensive in early May. Earlier this month, the United States gave the go-ahead for Kyiv to use some U.S. munitions to strike inside Russia to defend the Kharkiv region, with similar signaling from other NATO countries backing Ukraine.

"This is the first UAF [Ukraine Air Force] air-delivered munition delivered against a target within Russia," an unnamed military source told Sky News. Newsweek has as yet been unable to verify this claim.

Separately, the outlet reported that Kyiv had attacked a Russian landing ship that had moved from the Black Sea, where Ukraine regularly targets Russian vessels, to the Sea of Azov, citing the anonymous Ukrainian military source.

Kyiv denied responsibility for attacking a Russian vessel in the Sea of Azov, floating the idea of friendly fire for any damage.

Russian military Telegram channels, however, reported that Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian tugboat and barge around the Taganrog port, Rostov oblast, in southwestern Russia on Sunday. The city is perched on the northeastern edge of the Sea of Azov, not far from the Moscow-controlled southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

"This was the first time in the full-scale war that Ukrainian drones hit a [R]ussian target in the Sea of Azov," Ukrainian outlet Defense Express reported.

Russian outlet Baza, which claims to have links to Russia's security services, said the barge sustained "minor damage" and the windows were broken on the tugboat.

On Saturday, Ukraine carried out an attack on a military airfield in the southern Russian Republic of Astrakhan, Kyiv's GUR military intelligence agency said on Sunday. The agency posted satellite imagery it said showed damage to one of Russia's advanced Su-57 stealth fighter jets stationed at the Akhtubinsk airfield. It said this was the first ever successful strike on the expensive, sophisticated aircraft Moscow has been careful to keep away from Ukraine's reach.

In a later update, GUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov told Ukrainian media that "preliminary information" indicated two Su-57 aircraft may have been damaged.

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